Fire rewrites job descriptions for Old Capitol staff

Shalla Wilson, left, and Ann Smothers with books used in research. Photo by Tom Jorgensen.

Early in the morning of Nov. 20, 2001, Ann Smothers and Shalla Wilson began their day confident that they knew what their job descriptions were.

Three hours later, everything had changed.

Old Capitol’s dome had been destroyed by fire. All people in the building had escaped, but the museum and its priceless artifacts had been subjected to heat, smoke, and water damage. No longer were Smothers and Wilson simply the director and assistant director of Old Capitol Museum; instead, they were restorers, blueprint readers, and movers as well as information providers for insurance companies, media relations, and fund-raising and building guides in a recovery and reconstruction project.

Since the Greek Revival building is a historic exhibit in itself, it couldn’t be stripped to the rafters and redone. Instead, the work would have to follow the standards of the National Park Service for National Historic Landmarks. While those standards are voluminous, they are good guidelines to follow after a disaster, Smothers says.

In addition, the reconstruction would yield a chance to add amenities to Old Capitol that hadn’t been there, such as safety ladders, a fire suppression system update, better lighting, modern heat, ventilation, and air-conditioning systems, and a new way to raise and lower the flag on top of the dome. Safety and accessibility would be the priorities.

First steps

Damage assessment, cleaning, and making sure all inventories were valued and in order occupied the first several weeks.

Smothers and Wilson collected photos of Old Capitol from before its 1920 restoration to help in planning the rebuilding. The 1920 blueprints showed that the original column bases had been changed, so they had to find the original measurements. Early photos showed two windows looking to the west that had been blocked off when the concrete floor of the dome area was installed. By putting the windows back in, work crews gain an access to the roof and the building becomes more historically accurate.

The very top of the interior false dome has a skylight that had been painted over. The plan is to remove the paint so the skylight and the new windows to the west will provide additional light above the reverse spiral staircase.

Architects’ plans have an oculus—a circular window—at the top of the exterior dome. One-half of the oculus will be mobile, folding over the other half, and will yield a way to raise and lower the flag.

Ladders to reach the various areas of the “attic” (the square portion just over the roof), the dome, and the oculus had to be fitted painstakingly around the building’s features. The blueprints show how difficult that was for the architects to accomplish.

Smothers and Wilson handled dozens of media calls a week and provided information for all the people working on the project.

“We wanted to have it be exact, so we directed the callers to the most accurate research available,” Smothers says. “It really required exceptional communication skills.”

Time to move

Everything in the building would need to be moved out. Some furniture already had gone to restoration experts, but much remained behind in drier sections of the building. Wilson’s and Smothers’ offices were relocated in the Communications Center the first week in September. All the rest of the building’s furnishings would go to a temperature- and humidity-controlled storage facility.

This meant that an estimated 10,000 items needed to be cleaned, recorded, and packed—680 major historical artifacts; 2,000 books, 1,100 of them original to the territory and state library; 400 gift shop items; display items and units; all the original research materials from the 1970s restoration including the blueprints; draperies from every window; and more.

“Even the wall sconces had three parts, each of which had to be washed, carefully packed, numbered, and then placed in moving boxes,” Smothers says. “Those wall sconces and light fixtures were on all three floors.

“It wasn’t like moving your house, where you could say, ‘Hmmm…I think I’ll have a garage sale.’ These were historical artifacts with specific needs.”

Most of that packing fell to Smothers, Wilson, and Tadd Wiseman, Old Capitol’s custodian. A moving company spent two days wrapping the furniture and packing the books, and five days moving items from the top two floors out of the building.

Many framed artworks had to have boxes specially constructed.

“All I did for one whole day was make those boxes,” Wilson says.

“It was high-pressure work,” she says. “Every single thing you handled had value. Many of the items were donated by families, and after the fire, the families called to see if their donations had made it through. You knew how valuable the pieces are and what they mean to people.”

Future opportunities

“We’re most anxious to get the word out on what is paid for by insurance and what is not covered,” Smothers says. “We are reconstructing the dome to meet 2002 building codes. Insurance won’t replace what wasn’t there when it burned. When we decided to upgrade fire suppression, the oculus access, and new alarms, those were not covered. Our primary focus is on safety and accessibility and some of those things are not covered.”

The UI Foundation has a renewal fund for Old Capitol. So far, $115,835 has been collected, but more will be needed.

Looking over the entire experience now, Smothers and Wilson say they’re grateful for the chance to learn new skills and meet new challenges. They’ve learned to face a disaster and go on, how to coordinate a recovery, especially in terms of the artifacts; and especially how to take prioritizing to a new height and balance the new workload with their personal lives.

The most difficult challenges include providing information to a large and varied audience, and meeting the needs for their time from “enormous numbers of people.” Their administrative skills have had to be redirected, they say.

“In the midst of everything, it was hard to find time to console and help individuals feeling the loss” of Iowa’s symbol, Smothers says.

But the most difficult part, they agree, was relaying to the public how extensive the water damage was to the interior and how important and exacting the slow recovery, research, and rebuilding of a historical structure can be.

“This reconstruction has to be historically correct, meet today’s standards and codes, be safe and easier to monitor and maintain, and hopefully last for hundreds of years,” Smothers says.

“Old Cap is 160 years old, and for all that time it has touched the lives of people around it,” she adds. “People tell me they received their first kiss on the west steps, or they used to work in the building as a student. Our first seven donations to the recovery fund came from overseas—from a former visiting professor here, an exchange student connected with the hospital, and people in the Armed Forces. We really appreciate it when people tell us what Old Capitol means to them. It’s our roots.”

Article by Anne Tanner